Black and White
by Pat Taylor
Summary: Another yarn from Payne's NYPD years. With Alex injured, Payne must face off against one of the city's deadliest assassins to prevent a catastrophic gang war.
1. Prelude

**BLACK AND WHITE**

**Prelude**

'_NEW YORK!_

_'The city of lights, the city that never sleeps! The swinging town where big business, fashion, thrills, chills and excitement all collide! Where the nights are always an adventure! And, of course, the city of death. The city of crime. The city of horrors unimaginable. It's every bit as New York as Lady Liberty or the Velvet Underground. Murder most horrid. You can see it on every corner, you can smell it in the salt-tinged air of the city. Death._

_'And this week has been a record for it. Six murders, all seemingly disparate, have left residents in the world's greatest metropolis walking the streets in fear. Among the dead are rumoured Russian Mafioso and small time crook, Alexandra Litvenko (32), found dead in the Hudson river. His gang, or what was left of them, were later found in a warehouse in Union City…_'

I gently dropped the paper in a bin and lit up a cigarette. Plumes of ice-laden breath rose up stark against an indifferent sky. They were damn right, it was there plain as day, in black and white. This was a city of death.

You didn't notice it so much in the day. In the day you passed the delis and the tourists and the school buses, and you came round to thinking the Big Apple was a safe place to raise a kid. Everything seemed quiet, sun-kissed, safe.

Not so when the sun went down. All those happy families took the sane option and cleared the streets. Like Travis Bickle said in that old film Taxi Driver, night time was when all the animals came out to play. Junkie kids who'd knife you for ten bucks just to get another hit. Sex fiends with rape and pain on their mind, who weren't happy till they'd killed a girl's innocence forever. Dealers and hookers and mob bosses, all with nothing but sleazy green and hedonism on their minds. This was the real face of New York.

I was mad to think raising a kid in this god-forsaken city was a good idea. But when Michelle came back just a few days ago with the pregnancy test results, I hadn't even though about it, had I? It had been daytime then, the haggard old whore that was the Big Apple was still done up like a doll. I'd been watching the kids cycling up and down the street in the safety of New Jersey, the only thoughts in my mind birthday parties and family gatherings and graduation. A few days from promotion to detective, everything was looking sweet.

Right now, sat on a bench in some hopeless, forgotten park near the Bowery, I was starting to think this had all been a bad idea. What was I thinking? This was no place to bring up a child, not here. Not on a night like tonight.

I kept one focussed eye on the apartment window midway up the dirty grey tenement across the park. A single light was on. Occasionally my partner Alex Balder would wander to the window and flick the blinds. All clear. Inside was some reporter, due to make a federal deposition tomorrow morning. It seemed he had some major information on a string of murders that had rocked the city over the past week or so, information he wasn't happy to talk about until he was safe in the courtroom. Me and Alex were just two of the poor saps charged with spending the night watching over his apartment to make sure no-one took him out before he spread the incriminating evidence. There were about a million things I'd rather have done that night.

I sucked dry what was left of my cigarette and flicked it to the ground, crushing it under one boot. Reluctantly reached for a pack of Luckies in my shirt pocket. Two left. I frowned, and lit another up. I'd have to give the habit up soon. Bad for the baby. I'd have to consider making a lot of changes. No way could I keep putting my ass on the line night after night, not with a kid at home. Maybe I'd transfer to some safer part of the NYPD, white collar crime or something.

Then again, who was I kidding? There was no such thing as a safe part of the NYPD.

Alex crossed to the window again, his hunched-over figure slumping a little more with each trip. I watched as he flickered the blinds, shattering the light, bathing the apartment in an explosion of shadow, and then flickering them open again. He flicked the butt of a cigarette through the smallest crack. For a moment it plummeted like a shooting star against the black walls of the building, before disintegrating.

All clear.

I half considered making another pass, checking out the park. Took a drag on my cigarette.

And then a single gunshot told me not to bother.

As I watched the window shattered inwards, dead-on shot, spraying shards of glass like icicles, flickering and bouncing and throwing fire reflections in all directions. Alex ran to the window. Stupid mistake.

I leapt up, screaming, "ALEX, MOVE!" One hand reached instinctively for my Beretta, instantly forgetting everything I'd been taught about playing it cool, my eyes looking in all directions at once.

Alex's body cast a silhouette against the dim orange light. He peered around, keeping his body to the side, clutching his own firearm. Turned his head occasionally, talked, told someone to get down. He didn't seem to notice me.

A single red light flickered across the wall.

"Oh, sweet Jesus," I muttered, trying to follow the beam. "Oh, no…"

My free hand was reaching desperately for my phone, slamming in Alex's number instinctively. Misspelled, delete, come on, come on!

The red light vanished. Alex went to move back.

Too late.

Another shot rang out in the still of the night. As I watched a clot of blood, horribly black, flew up into the air of the apartment and someone cried out. Alex tumbled out of sight inside, away from me.

"Oh, no, oh, sweet Jesus, no," I muttered, running to a better position, scanning the city's jagged skyline. "God!"

Not the priority, a tiny voice screamed in my head. Forget Alex for now. The witness. Think of the witness!

It seemed to be screaming at me through a haze of panic and fear. More cops were edging around the window, all scanning the skyline. Acting instinctively. Not even thinking of…

Another shot, but not at my window. The other side.

Damn, damn, damn!

My phone rang briefly. I reached for it.

"Payne?" Thick Brooklyn accent. Sounded like Kapowski. "Jesus, man… the witness is dead. You'd best come up here, man. This is a real mess."

"Alex?" I balked. "How is he?"

"Jesus…" Kapowski muttered. "Just… just get up here, Payne. Man…"

I hung up.

Things had suddenly gone from bad to worse.


	2. 1: Broken Glass

**BLACK AND WHITE**

**_Chapter One: Broken Glass_**

Midnight. New York city.

Twelve doctors had walked past me in the past half an hour, muttering and conversing and giving off the impression they had a million more important things to do. Sixteen nurses, twenty porters. It was a busy night.

I sat in a dim corridor, staring through a row of windows at the lights of the city beyond, and I listened to the squeaks of shoes and the voices as they ran like an ocean around me. I needed a cigarette.

In the room behind me, Alex Balder was laid out, soaked in blood, as a bunch of those very same doctors tampered round with him, fighting to save his life as it flowed merrily on to the dirty tiles around him. My partner, Alex. No, more than that – my friend, Alex. The guy with whom I'd spent countless nights playing poker till the early hours as our wives slept, the guy who joined me on hunting trips and at parties and at meals in the city's finer restaurants. Always there with a smile or a quip or a word of advice.

Jesus… and this was the city I was about to bring a kid into. A city where a happily married man's concerns could switch from the warmed-up pasta he'd have for dinner later to if he was ever going to wake up again, in a New York minute.

More footsteps squeaked along the corridor, these a little slower, a little more determined. I kept my gaze on the window as they came to a halt next to me.

"Payne?" a female voice asked. "Max Payne?"

Crawling out of my mind, I turned to face her. A pretty brunette, with a face like Monroe's and a smile like a goddess. Officer Annette Tierney. One of ours. She'd been in the apartment when it happened, if I recalled. She wasn't smiling right now.

"Tierney," I muttered.

"How is he?"

"Stable, at the moment. He'll be in the hospital for a week or so. The bullet severed a major artery in his right arm."

"He got lucky. It could have been a lot worse. Has his wife been told?"

"On her way."

Tierney frowned and slumped into the chair next to me, following my gaze through the window. The skyline was a jagged open jaw, all stark cold lines and blinding lights like snake eyes. "God," she sighed. "What a mess. This is going to look bad in the papers tomorrow, huh?"

"I think we're all going to face a whole lot of bullshit," I shrugged. "Right now I couldn't care less."

She turned to face me. I didn't acknowledge her stare. "Max," she growled. "Don't go making this personal. This happens. You're a cop in the city. You've got to grow up, move on and hope for the best."

"Just what is your point?" I snapped suddenly, causing Tierney to flinch back in her seat.

"My point is…" she said softly, and then sterner, "My point is you've got other cases to deal with. The chief wants you back out on patrol."

I stood up, grumbling. No way. No way in hell.

"Max, wait!" Tierney cried, as I went to move down the corridor. "Don't you dare go back to that apartment…"

Her voice began to fade, under the squeak of my shoes on the linoleum.

"Max! Max, Jesus Christ! Max!"

I left her standing there.

……………………………………………………………………………………...

My car cruised through the backstreets of the city, past flickering lights and dirty smog. It seemed to move on auto. My mind was elsewhere, was in a hundred elsewhere's.

On the radio Suicide were singing 'Ghost Rider,' as the dim white lights of the city were flickering across the dashboard.

"America, America's killing its youth…"

I lit a cigarette.

Alex Balder was laid up in the hospital, a bullet wedged sorely in his arm, bleeding to death. I wasn't about to pretend it hadn't happened, to get back on the streets and deal with other people's crimes. This one had my priority right about now.

I'm going to find out who did this, Alex, I told myself. I'm going to find them, and God help me, I'm going to make them pay. I'm going to keep scum like that off the streets and away from my family.

I thought about Tierney's words, and then they were lost as I entered the slipstream of the Brooklyn Expressway.

It was too late. This was personal.

………………………………………………………………………………………

An apartment, near the Bowery, later that night. All the lights were on. Broken glass littered the floor like sugar, great shards jutting out of the filthy white carpet like ice daggers. As I watched the wind grabbed wisps of curtain and dragged them out into the chill night air. On the floor, near the window, were a few rusty puddles of dried blood.

"What do you think, officer?" a voice from behind me asked.

It was an elderly forensic, from the CSI. In his ridiculous all-over white duds he looked the world's scariest snowman.

"The bullet came in this way?" I asked, pointing to the shattered window.

The forensic nodded and pointed to a small numbered triangle, perched over a splatter of blood, near the window. One of several, all scattered at precise points around the room. With a grimace it also brought my attention to the two chalk outlines on the floor, the hand of which was positioned directly beneath my foot. I grimaced.

Near the head lay Alex's broken glasses.

I suddenly needed to vomit.

Composing myself, ignoring the heady stench of blood in the room, I allowed my gaze to focus on the skyline beyond the broken window. "Do you think you can calculate where the gun was fired from?"

"Should be able to," the forensic shrugged. He reached into what appeared to be a tool bag for a giant scientific protractor. Standing near the numbered plastic pyramid, he began to calculate angles.

It took a good five minutes of calculating angles, of determining positions. Finally the forensic said, "That building there."

I followed his gaze to a dim red-brick apartment block, a wonky tooth in the skyline's set. It looked uninhabited, and in the chill night air, like a ghost house. I shuddered.

"I think I can find that," I said. "Can we trace who owns it?"

The forensic shrugged. "It's one line of inquiry, officer. By the way, who's DT'ing this thing? I've yet to see anyone arrive…"

Stepping to the door, I turned back and said, "He couldn't make it."

The forensic shrugged.

I disappeared into the night.

To be continued...


	3. 2: A Bitter Aftertaste

**BLACK AND WHITE**

**_Chapter Two: A Bitter Aftertaste_**

The old tower didn't show up too many clues – whoever had done the job had been a real pro. The forensic team were in and out within fifteen minutes, leaving nothing to report. It might as well have been a ghost up there.

"Don't know what you're planning on doing about this, chief," a forensic asked, lighting up a cigarette. "But that block's a dead end."

I stared up at the building. A rugged red-brick tenement block, abandoned for all intents and purposes by all but the very poor and needy. Most of the lights were out and the windows boarded. Trails of ivy hung down one wall like a carpet, totally obscuring a shattered window. There were tufts of grass sticking out of the masonry. Once, a long time ago, there'd been two proud statues around the doorway, guarding the upper-middle class inhabitants. One was chipped and smeared with graffiti, the other had gone entirely. About halfway up a forlorn 'FOR SALE' sign looked like even it had given up hope.

Thinking, I said, "And you're sure you can see the witness' flat from there?"

"Top window, sure," the forensic shrugged. "Clear as day. In fact, this place is nigh-on perfect for this sort of thing. One window's been knocked out, but our John Doe barely left an eyelash in doing it. There's no-one about in there but a couple of winos and junkies. And a gunshot, even from a high calibre rifle, is hardly an uncommon sound in this neighbourhood, you know?"

I frowned and turned back towards the car I'd been resting against. In the back, a forensic was making a few phone calls on a hefty mobile phone. "Any luck?" I asked.

He briefly covered one hand over the phone. "Just called HQ, reckon we've got a lead on the tower's owner. Does the name Dmitri Potemkin ring any bells?"

"Big player in the Russian mob," I replied. "Got a serious handhold on the upper East side. Alex busted a few of his heavies for possession a year or so ago. We've had a few run-ins."

"Can you trace him?"

"Operates mainly out of The Majestic club down near the waterfront." I turned away and began to walk to my car, thanking the forensic expert.

I had a lead, and that was good enough for the moment.

The Majestic club and hotel was, like the old-guard mobsters running it, a relic from a very different age. It had stood on its spot, in the rat-runs along the Brooklyn riverfront, since its days as a dance hall in the fifties. It had, over the years, progressed as a concert venue, disco, short-lived restaurant and, in recent years, a dirty old gentleman's club, offering its middle-class professional patrons a chance to listen to sleazy jazz and down overpriced rotgut vodkas.

I left the car in an alley a few blocks down and walked the rest of the way. Potemkin had me listed as a Cop To Keep An Eye On, word had it, and I was wandering straight into his den. I didn't care. Right now all that mattered to me was the information I knew full well he had in his head, and if I had to decipher that info through bullet holes, so be it. As I ducked into the narrow entrance doorway, I thought of Alex lying in the hospital, wires dangling from his arms like snakes, and clutched at my gun.

Two goons met me at the entrance, both large, blond-haired and blue eyed. They frisked me briefly, every pat and slap forcible enough to knock the wind out of me. The guy on the left, the bigger of the two, yanked out my gun and pocketed it with a grin.

"Hey," I spoke up. "Hand that back." I reached for my badge, flashed it briefly. "I'm a cop. Max Payne. Go ask Potemkin about me. He'll tell you two bozos to send me straight through regardless. Or you can both accompany me down to the station. I'm not in the mood for any of this, it's been a bad night."

The goons, who my agitated mind christened Pinky and Perky, gave each other askew glances, shrugged almost on cue and wandered into the backroom. I lit a cigarette and watched the old folks do shots of cheap brandy over games of checkers in the lobby, and wondered what it would feel like to be that bored with life itself. Just counting the days down, one tumbler at a time, to the comfort of the grave. The great big chill out before the great big comedown. One man, wearing a shabby suit, sat chewing a thick cigar in an armchair in the far corner. In the dim lamp-light his red eyes seemed to question his own existence and come back with a negative. Someone was shouting in Russian somewhere.

As I flicked half the Lucky to the carpeted floor, my throat like sandpaper, Pinky and Perky slunk back round a corner. "You're through," Pinky said bitterly. "But the gun stays here."

The muscle lead me straight through the corridors to Potemkin's inner sanctum on the first floor. Tucked neatly away at the back of the club, bathed in faded opulence, the office door was solid heavy oak and the wallpaper soundproof. Typical mobster's office, all built for one reason and one reason only.

Pinky slammed hard on the oak door, three rapt knocks, and was greeted with a bellowed, "Come in." Perky opened the doors and we stepped into the office.

It's common knowledge, or maybe an urban myth, or maybe the two aren't entirely different anyway, that dog owners start looking like their dogs eventually. It's never been said about buildings, but in Dmitri Potemkin's case, it was entirely true. Potemkin, in his shabby suit, with his tufts of white hair, was the very essence of the Majestic club. He had an old Russian peasant's face, all strained and granite, the kind of face all the old Communists seemed to have once upon a time. His hair was salt and pepper, a mess of tufts but slicked back in a desperate bid to appear presentable – it just looked about twenty years out of date. His cool grey eyes peered out at the world with a sorrowful knowledge. They said that they'd seen it all before, and the worst part was they'd see it all again someday. Because people never, ever learn.

"Ah," he grunted, his Russian accent softened to a barely noticeable slur. "Mr Payne. Grab a seat."

The only seat in the room was a battered, dog-eared leather chair, placed opposite the desk. A single goon in a roll-neck sweater, sporting an impressive poker face and an even more impressive six-gun on his hip, stood about a yard behind and to the right of it. His eyes kept their gaze on me and didn't shift an inch. I flashed him a smile and took a seat.

"Vodka?" Potemkin offered, reaching for an expensive looking bottle. I accepted and he poured out a single shot, tossing it neatly across the desk. "You strike me as a man with respect for the firewater, Mr Payne. Don't expect a mixer to tarnish her, not in my presence."

I sunk the vodka in one swift action. It swung straight down my throat like a meteor, exploding in my gut and causing my gorge to rise. The back of my throat froze instantly. For a moment my eyes bulged, but my teeth slammed down hard on my tongue and I tried to maintain as stiff a face as possible.

It didn't work. Potemkin chuckled softly, but not unkindly. "So what brings you here, Mr Payne?" he asked, pouring himself a shot.

"I'm not going to insult your intelligence," I replied. "I'm sure you can make an educated guess."

Potemkin's face slumped solemnly. Somewhere in the background soft jazz was playing. "Our little reporter," he scoffed. "What makes you think I had anything to do with it?"

"I don't. Fact is, half the Russian mob wanted a crack at this guy and I haven't got the slightest clue where to begin. But when it turns out the hitman happened to be using one of your tenements as his grassy knoll, it narrows the search down a little."

"So?" Potemkin shrugged. "Half the tenements round that way are left open to squatters most of the time anyway. There's no reason why one of the other boys couldn't have used their man in my block. You've got jack on me, Payne."

"The only guy with anything on you or anyone else is dead," I said bitterly. "And a friend of mine is laid up in hospital, caught in the crossfire. All I want are answers."

Potemkin frowned and raised the vodka to his lips. He took a long sip without batting an eyelid and placed it back on the table. "What's in it for me?"

"You don't spend the night in an interrogation chamber," I replied. Potemkin, his head not moving, flickered his eyes to the bodyguard next to me. After about half a minute they simultaneously started chuckling.

"You're hardly in a bargaining position, are you, Mr Payne?" Potemkin said. "You are here, smack bang in the middle of my territory, with one of my men's guns practically in your ear."

"And you think you've got the balls to pull the trigger?" I said. "You think HQ are just going to shrug it off when one of their men disappears tracing up a lead? You'll bring half the NYPD down on your ass. Don't be an idiot. You talk, or I'll take you down and make you talk. We can play it either way for all I care." I sneered at the bouncer to my right, whose poker face barely budged. "And lose the help, huh?"

Potemkin dismissed the goon with one swish of his index finger, then reached for the vodka. "God help me," he muttered, pouring a clumsy shooter and then downing it in one. He might as well have been downing Perrier for all the effect it had on him.

Finally, after a long sigh, he said, "It's all change round here, Max. Since the wall came down a couple of years back all the heavies and hoodlums from the Old Country have been spilling into the city, seeking to cut out a fortune and even a few old scores. You seen all the murders lately, right?"

I nodded in the affirmative. They'd been a little hard to miss.

"All the young bloods are wiping out the old gangs and each other. It's dog eat dog out there, every man cutting up everything in sight. We're not like the Italians, Payne. We don't have tradition, age-old families, a hierarchy. They're savages, those kids, and they've got nothing on their minds but money, power and everything that comes with them."

"Then who did it?" I asked, cutting to the chase. "One of the new bloods?"

"Almost certainly," Potemkin shrugged. "And it sounds like the work of the worst of them." The aged mobster stood up, pouring himself another shot. After throwing it back, he lit up a thin black cigarette with a brass Zippo. "You heard, in any of your files, of someone calling himself The Man In White?"

I shook my head. "Doesn't ring a bell."

But I was lying. It did somewhere. But who? Where? Something Alex had said…

"Well," Potemkin continued. "I guess you wouldn't have. I'm sure he goes under about eight hundred aliases. He's a newcomer, nephew to one of the old timers – you know Mikhail Drenko?"

I nodded.

"His uncle," Potemkin continued. "Turned up dead in the Hudson a few weeks back with a note stuffed in his pocket, written in his blood on the back of an oilskin. Just said four words: The Man In White. And another mark – a scar, in the shape of a star."

The vodka froze in my throat. For a second I felt my gorge rise again. "The Hood," I choked. "The mark of the Hood. Sweet Jesus."

Your average man on the street had not heard of the Hood, not unless he swung in the right high circles. Not many had, and even fewer had seen him. You didn't often see The Hood and live to pick him out from a line-up. But to the NYPD he was a minor celebrity, proud owner of a rap-sheet from here to Chicago. He'd racked up twenty-two confirmed kills and god only knew how many other disappearances were his responsibility. Gangs, heavy mob gangs, had gone to war over the Hood. Rumour had it he charged a million a hit, at the very least. The FBI were offering double to whoever brought him in alive.

Potemkin suddenly laughed, a bitter old man's laugh. "Yes," he said. "This, this Man In White, has The Hood on his side. Do you know what that means? It means he's going to carve up the city, easy, take out the other gangs as they shoot themselves in the feet, and establish himself as crown prince of the Russian mob. He's already started, and our reporter pal had the whole scoop."

"Do you have any idea if this reporter left notes, a number anything?"

The Russian carried on laughing, endlessly. "That's your job, officer," he giggled. "Surely that's your job." And then his laughter turned to bitter tears. "Oh, sweet holy Mary, it's all finished. All of it. All over."

"Come on!" I snapped, standing up. The vodka had made my head swim and my stomach churn. I fought through it. "You have to know something! Anything!"

Potemkin laughed again, his mouth a wide grin, and his eyes more knowledgeable than ever. Now he looked like he'd peered into the mouth of hell itself, and realised it was nothing but a reflection. Half laughing, half choking, he said, "You see…"

And then the room flashed white, and flames tore through my world, and I was thrown into unconsciousness.

To be continued…

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to all those reviewers, and apologies for the lateness of the response – been swamped with university work and computer problems lately. Thanks for reading.


	4. 3: Seeking Out The Light

**BLACK AND WHITE**

**Chapter Three: Seeking Out The Light**

A bell was ringing. Somewhere. Didn't sound like a church bell or a school bell

(a church bell or a school bell what are you saying when did you last hear anything like a church bell or a school bell)

from out in the distance. I stretched out an arm. It felt like someone had strapped a car to the end of it. I winced, choked and wished I had a cigarette.

Then the darkness started to fade back, slowly, colour filtering in from some unseen white point. I squinted and cowered. The light was blinding.

And then my eyes adjusted, and I realised I was in the docks somewhere. The air stunk of rust, oil, fumes and the dirty old Hudson. The scent of the city, pure and distilled. There was another smell there too, beneath it all. A real sharp, acrid stench, one that made me think of abandoned backwater shacks, forgotten cellars, narrow alleyways, shallow graves. It was the smell of death – and it was everywhere.

From behind me someone chuckled, deep, smug and completely in control. It was Potemkin. But he looked like he'd crawled straight out of a nightmare. Half his face was blown clean off. Blood had matted along the other half of his face, thick and black in the hazy grey light.

"Well," he grinned. "What I wouldn't do for a shot of vodka right now, eh, Payne?"

"Seems like you've had one too many," I grunted, standing on unsteady legs. "You're off your head."

This amused Potemkin. Right now it seemed anything would amuse him. Once you've had half your face blown off all life seems like one big joke. He laughed endlessly, one big cackle that seemed to bounce off all the old buildings around us and fly off into the Atlantic somewhere.

Finally, coughing and spluttering, he turned to the blanket next to him. "Know where we are, Payne?" he said. When he talked I could see the tendons in his jagged, mangled mouth twist and contract. I'd have thrown up, if I had anything left in me to do it.

"The docks," I shrugged. "But it's not right, none of it. I keep expecting to see Elvis chasing a white rabbit down a hole or something."

"Are you familiar with the idea of purgatory?" Potemkin continued. "You know – the realm between heaven and hell, the great big waiting room before the afterlife? When all your deeds hang in the balance and your destiny lies ahead of you, and all that crap?"

I slammed a hand on my head. "And I thought today couldn't get any worse. Oh, man."

"You're here," Potemkin said, "because you've got some unfinished business. We're all ciphers, right? Little men in the great big chess game. Your role's not over yet, Payne. You've got a lot more destiny to dole out. Lives hanging in the balance. Like this guy here."

Potemkin's arm, broken in three places, stretched and reached for a dirty grey blanket next to him. I could hear the crackling, like the sound popcorn makes in your head when you eat it, and the muscles stretching like piano wire. It cheered me up slightly, made me think the pain in my arm was a weekend cruise to Aruba.

He flung the blanket back with as much ceremony as a dead guy can muster. Underneath, curled into a foetal position, was a familiar figure.

"Alex?" I said, stepping forward. "Is he ok?"

"Maybe," Potemkin shrugged. "Maybe time's running out for him, and some very nasty men have him in their gaze. Maybe if you don't get your act together and wake up, he'll be a goner."

Alex's pale face, as frail and pitiful as a sleeping child's, seemed oblivious of our presence. I reached out and slipped a finger under his neck. No pulse. Why the hell would he have a pulse? Right now we were nowhere-men, in a nowhere-place. I was pulse-checking Casper the Friendly Ghost.

"How?" I asked. "How do I save him?"

"That you'll have to figure you out for yourself," Potemkin replied. "And you don't have much time to do it."

He was right. Above us the black towers had started to twist and buckle, curl like fingers. New York was morphing into a giant steel hand, flexing for the first time in centuries. The twisting steel screamed like a thousand car brakes, a sound that filled my head completely, pushing it to the absolute brink of explosion.

"Run, Payne!" Potemkin cried. "Run like the wind!"

I swept my arms beneath Alex, hitching him up. The blanket slumped to the side and tumbled away.

Beneath our feet the pier was starting to shudder. The fingers were clenching, closing in. The dirty water beneath us was starting to bubble ferociously, to boil up. Nowhere to run. As the fingers closed in, Potemkin started giggling insanely.

Black tentacles, huge whipping worms, shot out from the bubbling water. They blasted through the ancient pier wood, sending oil canisters, hunks of wood and rope all flying into the air. Potemkin's laughter turned into a hopeless scream as the worms twisted around him and wrapped him up tight. He flailed desperately for a moment, and then the tentacles yanked him through the pier, into the bubbling water below. Something grumbled in the depths, barely audible under the destruction.

So long, Dmitri. You'll not worry about the cold again. Not where you're going, you poor bastard.

Clutching Alex in my arms, I ran along the pier. Hunks of steel and concrete were tumbling down around me like meteors. Those black snake-tentacles were bursting through the pier beneath my feet, to my right, ahead of me. I ducked and dived past them. For a ghost, Alex felt like a dead-weight.

Then the pier was shattering beneath me, completely, and the water was flying up to meet us like a black fist. As it swept us away my world was blown into darkness.

And then I was awake, and standing on solid ground.

My eyes adjusted for a second. I was standing in a dark chamber, an empty void. There were mirrors around me, circling me, throwing my reflections back at me from a hundred different angles. I peered in one and saw my face thrown back at me from a million angles and a million nowhere places. I thought of kaleidoscopes I'd played with as a kid, watching and twisting the images into a thousand new forms.

"Didn't know you were such a narcissist, Max," a voice said from everywhere at once. A female voice, a little husky, but for all its flaws it was gorgeous. The most perfect voice I'd ever heard, Adelina Patti after a pack of Lucky Strikes. "You of all people should know the penalty for vanity."

"You've got to flaunt what you got," I choked out. My voice bounced back at me a thousand times, like my image, bouncing round inside my head till it faded into a dull ring that wouldn't leave me.

I'm not doing that again, I thought. Not for a long while.

And then she stepped out, from behind the nearest mirror, the most knockout dame I'd ever seen. She was a hottie, this one. They came from all round the world, just for a glimpse of her face. She was Helen of Troy to power infinitum, her face launching fleets of ships from all over the place, half of them risking life and limb for the briefest of peaks. They stuck her gorgeous face on postal stamps and postcards and tour-guides.

Lady Liberty was smiling. For some reason that was the scary part.

"Someone like me," she said, "Has every right to be vain. I've got the looks, and I've got the body to boot. I've got men who'll travel to godforsaken backwaters to kill and be killed. I've got folks who'll sit in their rooms and obsess over me till they're gone enough to blow up a skyscraper. Men will do anything for me, Mr Payne."

"You're not my type," I replied. "I hate to disappoint you, sweetheart. Girls like you chill me to the bone. And I'm a happily married man."

Lady Liberty laughed a little. Her laugh was as sweet as a song, as sweet as Star-Spangled Banner bouncing round a Montana valley or a Nebraska corn-field. I could listen to it forever.

"I've never needed to marry," she said. "But my children will always be there to support me. I'm sure you've met them. They're quite prolific. The single mother who drowns her baby, just to get enough money to stiff her heroin addiction. The eleven-year-old boy carving a dummy-cross in a bullet and mumbling death threats to his teachers. The gang of men in darkened basements, looking over blueprints of office blocks and making bombs out of soap and orange juice. All my kids, Payne, and they've all done me proud."

Suddenly my reflection slipped away, distorted. My shape transformed, and in each mirror a new image rippled into place. In one was Michelle, smiling, beautiful. In another, Alex Balder. My mother. My father. Friends from school. All the people who'd ever meant a damn to me.

For the first time I noticed that Lady Liberty had ditched the torch. In its place was a revolver, a six-shooter like something from the old west.

"I know you think you can win this, Max," she said. "But no-one puts one over me and my city. New York's always going to be standing there. You can take out The Hood, you can take out this Man In White – my children, all of them – and I'll still be standing, still watching over everything. I'll have my revenge, Max. I don't need to kill you. But I can take away everything that matters to you."

She fired, a volley of bullets that flew wildly around me. The mirrors shattered, Michelle's and Alex's and all the other reflections exploding into blue shards that flew into all directions around me. I cried out in horror. What looked like blood splashed from behind the mirrors, thick black streaks against the glass.

Over it all, Lady Liberty was cackling.

"You cops," she smirked. "You think it's all straight-forward, all in black and white. All it takes is a few bullets and a woman's scream, a child's cry, to tell you that there's cracks you can slip through, cracks that'll lead to lives that are nothing but grey and hopelessness. Good and evil's a bad joke, a kid's story. Enjoy this life while it lasts, Max. One day soon we'll get together again and talk, and I'll put you straight."

The mirrors and darkness fell away, and as I hovered back into reality, I could still hear Lady Liberty's giggling.

I didn't think I'd be forgetting it anytime soon.

_To be continued…_


	5. 4: Harsh Reality

**BLACK AND WHITE**

**Chapter Four: Harsh Reality**

There's this little theory, in the circles that deal with all that psychiatric shit, that I learned a few years back studying psychology. Basically, it states that feelings in dreams are nothing but reality, filtered through the subconscious. Which means reality, but without time, or place, or anything else to anchor it down. Which is why, the old theory goes, if you die in your dreams, you'll never wake up.

Or if you're getting a little gyp in your right arm, you'll wake up and realise that it's half hanging off.

I grunted a little and tried to budge it. Maybe it wasn't quite hanging off. But it had been pretty severely gashed, maybe even knocked out of joint. Sticky blood had slicked up under my sleeve and pooled in my lap. I was a mess. Having it tied securely behind my back wasn't doing it any favours either.

Harsh reality was a small room with boarded-up windows in some bad area of town. Through the cracks I could hear the rumble of cars, a long way off, and smell the city's unique odour. A New Yorker always knows when he's home. There's not a thing on earth that smells like it.

Dead in front of me was a girl, pretty little thing. It didn't take Philip Marlowe to deduce she'd just come out of some kind of martial arts training. Loose fitting black karate gear. Bare feet. Thin sheen of sweat. Brunette hair tied back with a bandana. If it wasn't for the black cigarette she was chewing, she'd have looked like an extra from a Bruce Lee flick. She sat back in a flimsy chair, legs crossed, face bathed in the light of a naked lamp-bulb, and watched me closely.

"You've got balls, cop," she said, exhaling a blue cloud. It smelled like steel and acid. A good tobacco, this one. My host was at least a lady with class. "Anyone else that close to a hunk of C4 would still be out for at least another week."

"Wonderful," I frowned. "What was the consolation prize? Don't answer that."

"I won't," she said, taking another drag. The tip flared up the way only good tobacco does, slow and steady, like the furnace on a ship. It bounced fire in her deep blue eyes. She didn't budge an inch. "Be thankful. Tonight's your lucky night. Had you been anyone else my father would have terminated you a long time ago. Instead he decided you were more use to him alive."

"Well," I said. "If this is heaven, I want my money back. You got anymore of those smokes? I'm a little in need here."

She sighed, reached into a drawer on the desk behind her, and took out a small brass box. Then, selecting another of the skinny black cigarettes, she crossed the room to me, and untied me. My arms swung downward, both instantly screaming in the kind of agony only overworked muscles can muster up. The breath froze in my throat and for the second time since waking up I fought the urge to collapse again. I risked a glance at my right arm. Mangled, burnt, and with a real sweet scar running the length of it, the kind only a shard of glass the size of a machete can leave you with, when hurled at you from, say, a hunk of C4.

Something cold and sharp pricked me in the back of the neck. "Stand up," the girl said. "Walk over to the wall with your arms in the air. Comply and you'll get your cigarette. Play dirty and you'll lose your spinal cord. Deal?"

"Crystal," I replied, walking slowly towards the wall. Whoever the girl was, she was no amateur. A rookie would have been shuddering like the San Andreas. That knife point didn't budge a bit. It stayed on my neck. Her feet barely made a noise. I started to feel like I was being stalked by a ghost.

I reached the wall, with its peeling floral wallpaper, and rested against it. It stank of damp-rot. No-one had lived here for some time, not properly.

"Turn around," she demanded, easing the knife off me.

I complied. Almost instantly I found the blade, a shiny Bowie knife, held to my throat, and those soulless blue eyes locked dead on mine. She didn't waste a second. With her spare hand she slid the cigarette into her mouth, lit it with a silver Zippo, and placed it between my lips. Cherry lipstick.

"You know," I said, taking a long drag. "This whole intimidation business would be one hell of a lot easier with a gun."

"Guns are for cowards," she replied. "At this stage, anyway. Besides, my father doesn't want me using guns till my nineteenth birthday. He says it's vital to train with blades first. Get used to using stuff that comes to hand, get round the idea of killing a man and looking him straight in the eyes."

"Your old man sounds like a real sweetheart. When can we get acquainted?"

"We'll head up right now. He's expecting you. Turn around and walk out that door."

I shrugged, stepping back from her blade. I wandered out, into a corridor that led up a short rickety fire escape and nowhere else. The entrance behind was blocked off by furniture and hunks of concrete. She didn't have to follow me, but she shadowed me as I wandered up the staircase. At the top there was a single door, all chipped paint and rusty hinges. I pushed it open and stepped inside.

The room was an office, significantly swankier than its counterpart downstairs. A bookshelf, containing volumes that didn't appear to have been touched since Roosevelt's days, covered a single wall. Both windows were wide open, and a few tatty net curtains billowed outwards, into the still night sky. Most of the room was occupied by a hefty desk, which appeared to be covered in papers, blueprints and an alarming array of blades, guns and other tools that would do the same job, albeit significantly nastier.

The man sat behind the desk, who I presumed to be the girl's father, was a bald heavy-set type in a loosened shirt and long black coat. He looked a little Eastern in appearance, maybe even Romany. Sharp features, pointed nose, deep tan. Set far back in that solid head were a pair of the darkest eyes I had ever seen. They were jet black, the colour of deep space. I found it impossible to stare into them for any length of time. I got uncomfortable flashes of shattering mirrors and a grinning Lady Liberty.

"Mr Payne," the man said, looking up from his work. "Glad to have you with us. Can I offer you a drink?" He reached for a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey from beneath the desk and a single glass. I grunted in the positive. He poured me out a slug. I got the feeling he'd have done it anyway. Sliding the glass towards me, he turned to the girl standing in the doorway. "Did he give you any trouble, Jezney?"

"No," the girl replied. She didn't budge from the doorway. "I slipped him a cigarette and he was quiet as a lamb."

"Good, good," he nodded. "Could you give us a moment please, dearest? We've got a few things to discuss here."

The girl must have left the doorway, because his gaze returned to me. I was damned if I heard her make a noise.

After a moment he raised a hefty hand across the desk to me. I grabbed it weakly, his giving mine three brief jolts before releasing. "It's a pleasure to finally meet," he said. "I suppose you know me as The Hood."

"I wouldn't know you from Marilyn Monroe," I shrugged, taking a long drip. The fire shot down my throat. Good, honest whiskey. You could forget your vodka. "But right now I'm willing to take your word for it."

The Hood didn't chuckle, nor did he pour himself a drink. He didn't strike me as a laugh-a-minute guy.

Leaning back in his armchair, he cut to the chase immediately. "My Payne, I have a proposition for you," he began. "It's very much in your interest."

"Go on," I replied. "But if it's the whole 'leave here alive' business, don't waste your breath. I'm not budging an inch without a fight. We've got to square up for what you did to my partner tonight."

"Please," The Hood sighed. "People like you, you just can't let these things go, can you? Everything's a personal insult, everything has to be avenged. The lines get drawn, everything's neat and tidy. You're right – I put your partner in hospital tonight, and I killed a man. Two men, if you count the blast that killed Potemkin. But there was nothing personal to it. Two were business, and your partner was merely… collateral."

"Collateral?" I snapped. "What the hell are you saying?"

"I'm saying this, Payne," The Hood explained. "We both have problems, we're both trying to do an honest job. I think we can both iron out these problems tonight, without any mess."

"Problems?" I roared, standing up. "The only problem I have is you, you son of a bitch!"

He didn't budge, not an inch. I got the feeling that I could have pointed a tactical nuclear missile square between his eyes and he wouldn't have budged. The man was an Easter Island head. With a weary frown he reached into a pocket of his coat, and withdrew a small remote device.

"This walkie-talkie," he said, "gives me direct access to one of the men hired to me by my client, who is currently downtown in the hospital, disguised as a porter and keeping a close eye on Mr Balder. He is also keeping a close eye on the Semtex packed neatly under your partners bed, and has his own finger on another button – this one a trigger, designed to blow your partner and most of the hospital into space. Now, unless you want Mr Balder to be a smoking hole in the ground, I suggest you sit down and listen."

The bastard had me caught. A trap, the whole thing, and I'd wandered straight into it, like a real amateur. It was ingenious, really. Assassinate the reporter carrying the evidence that would have sent his client down, pop a bullet in a cop, and hope one of the rest of them gets angry to enough to follow the bread trail home. Then hold the injured cop hostage and he's all yours. Defeated, I slumped into my seat.

"Go on," I said. "What's the deal?"

"I'm wrapping up tonight," The Hood said. "Things are being put into motion, major changes in the criminal underworld. I have one more hit to take care of and the stage will be set for my client to assume control of the city. Unfortunately there are a few loose ends still remaining." He started drumming a finger on the desk, idly reaching for one of the blades. "The deceased reporter, who your boys did such a fine job of protecting, happened to make a brief deposition, on tape, shortly before his death. This deposition was sealed in a steel box and locked away in the headquarters of the Bank of America. However, before he died he had the box transferred to a place he thought would be safe – your own police precinct, Mr Payne. My client believes that everything is in that box – enough evidence to put him, his men and myself away for life. He would prefer it, perhaps, if this evidence was destroyed."

"Is that it?" I shrugged. "What about his hard-drive, notes he sent to the paper?"

"Nothing. He was scared. Death threats from major Russian mafia figures tend to have that effect. He put everything in that box and assumed you'd use it to prosecute us."

"Then," I said, taking a long sip of whiskey, "I suppose you want me to reclaim this box for you?"

"You have an hour. Retrieve that box, Mr Payne. It'll be in the reporter's name somewhere. Once you have it, I want you to meet my daughter at a place I'll relay to you half an hour from now." He gently slid the blade into the jacket of his pocket and reached for one of the guns.

"Look," I frowned. "How do you know this is going to be the end-all solution? What's to stop me coming back with a task-force? How do I know you won't screw me over at the last minute?"

"Don't be foolish, Payne," The Hood snarled, sliding the gun into his shirt holster. "My daughter will be carrying her own communicator, with her own instructions. If I suspect anything I'll kill Balder. And if I don't have the deposition within the hour, I'll terminate him anyway. But I won't kill him out of maliciousness. This is a job, not a pastime, and I'm not a murderer."

He stood up, reaching for a black mouth-guard on the desk, the kind you saw ninjas wearing in old karate flicks. The one major difference here was that this appeared to be made of fibreglass. Tough fibreglass. The kind that invited a broken wrist if you thought to bust him in the jaw. With little ceremony he clamped it into place and pulled a hood over his head, bathing his face in shadow. For one horrible second he looked like the Grim Reaper.

"Wait!" I cried as he started walking to the door. "Hold up…"

"Fifty-eight minutes and counting," he said. "You'll find a car outside the front door. I'm sure you can see your own way out."

With that he turned off down the corridor, unlocking a heavy door that had been locked not so long ago, and left me alone with my thoughts and fears.

To be continued...


	6. 5: A Cage of TripWires

**BLACK AND WHITE**

**_Chapter Five: A Cage Of Trip-Wires_**

The car was a real old wreck, like something that had been dragged out of a scrap heap. It had fit right in to the scenery round the Bronx squat the Hood had been using as a HQ. But out here, on the city's sweeping boulevards and highways, where anything less than a top notch Ferrari with all the trimmings was simply not de rigeur, the scratched-up Pontiac was enough to make the driver feel a little self-conscious.

Maybe on some other night. Right now I was too busy beating myself senseless.

Lights swept past the windows, a non-stop flicker of white in the corner of my eye, and street-signs to the other boroughs flashed past without incident. I knew where I was going.

I'd been sewn up real good, from start to finish. And now I was stuck here, in a paradox that would make Joe Heller pack it all up and stick to the military. Basically, in order to save my partner's life, I had to secure and destroy some evidence that would doubtless solve the whole case and have the guy responsible for my partner's sorry state arrested. Whilst, at the same time, this guy, The Hood to his friends and enemies, was planning another murder that would doubtless trigger a major gang war, resulting in more loss of life. HoopHoHH

The big paradox, then. Either save my partner's life, or stop a gang war that would kill many more. A cage of trip-wires, and I'd walked straight in, a real idiot.

I glanced at the dash clock. I had three quarters of an hour. A shaking hand reached for my smokes. Thankfully The Hood's daughter Jezney had been good enough to return those to me.

I'd thought my way around it. The obvious thing to do, of course, would be to walk into HQ, tell them some psycho was about to blow Alex up, and conveniently have them stop him before my partner became a brass plaque on an NYPD memorial, whilst I gleefully continued my hunt for The Hood unabated. There was no way I was going to follow that one through. As soon as the Hood's man was disturbed he'd trigger the blast. I wasn't about to risk it. And I didn't have nearly enough time to trace The Hood after doing all that.

So where did this leave me?

I chewed on the cigarette, and prayed the night wouldn't hold any more surprises for me.

The Precinct, then. My home away from home.

On a still-spring night it looked almost quaint – high rise Victorian architecture, all concrete awnings and gargoyles and unnecessary frills. The lights glowed softly into the night air. Cops hung around out front, talking with members of the public, smoking, eating doughnuts, drinking coffee and doing all the other stuff cops do when they're meant to be working. From the darkness of the old Pontiac I watched the precinct and felt a little lonely. Stuck out here in the dark.

Worse, I felt like a traitor.

Come on, Max, I thought. Think of Alex, laid up there in the hospital, fighting for his life and completely oblivious to the timer rapidly ticking down. I had one shot to save him.

I left the car and walked towards the station. Pulled a fake smile. Nodded and greeted the cops out front. They gave me desultory glances. Some stared a little closely. It didn't surprise me. I'd just stumbled out of an obviously stolen car, my shirt was soaked in blood, my hair was a mess. I looked a state. And through it all I was wandering up the steps to the precinct, grinning like a fool.

Gugino was on the desk. Sweet old thing, she was. Had a house in Queens and two little hellion offspring who spent more time in here with their old Ma than they'd have liked to.

She glanced up from her work, mumbling, "Yes?"

"Annie?" I replied, still faking that smile. "It's me, Max. Max Payne."

She looked up again, then a hand swung up to her bosom. "Max!" she cried. "Oh, sweet mother of Christ, you're alive! We all thought you died over in the bomb-blast at the Russian's joint. Wait till I tell the others…"

"No," I hissed, still faking that smile. Something in her eyes doubted me. They looked near-terrified. "No, there's no time. If you tell anyone they'll have me stay here at the station. I'm close to solving this whole case here. I just need a little more time, and it's best to do it whilst I'm on the blindside."

"How the hell did you survive that?" Gugino chirped in her thick Brooklyn accent. I began to wonder if speaking to her wasn't a mistake. "Petersburg and the rest just came back from there, they said the place is a gutted hole! I swear, I ain't never seen a night like this in all my days. Three dead, seven injured, they make it. Potemkin got half his head blown clean off, they had to use dental records to tell it was him, in fact they're doing that right now…"

"It's him," I said, backing off. "Trust me."

"Lord save us, it's not safe to walk the streets in this city any more," she continued. Her words faded out to a dull hum. I tried to walk away. "I tell you, I worry about my boys here sometimes…"

"I think New York has more to worry from them," I replied, angrily. "Listen, I need to get up to the Seized Items room. There should be a box in there, picked up from the bank not so long ago. I need that box… should be in the name of that reporter who got killed earlier tonight."

"Ok," she said, slightly peeved. "No need to get angry. I'll buzz you through. Tierney should already be up there."

I thanked God for the first break the bastard had given me all night. Tierney was one of the best cops on the force. If I needed anyone's help right now, it was hers.

I watched as Gugino did her thing, thankfully taking less time over this one. It only seemed to be the men who got the full wrath of her tongue, or maybe just me. I cursed the day I ever decided to lend an ear to the elderly. With Tierney she was brief, curt even.

"There you go," she smiled, revealing a rack of teeth that reminded me of the Andes. "Go straight through."

"Thank you so much," I replied. "I owe you one, Annie, I really do."

"Just you come back alive, and you can make me a coffee," she winked.

I smiled, turned around and half ran up the staircase. Cops in full uniform paid me a few odd glances as I scaled the dirty concrete. Bang ahead of me was a wall-mural of the NYPD badge. It sat there, watching over the tiled lobby, as it had done since the days of Prohibition, with the same aloof air of power. I'm the force at its purest, it said. Whatever this evil city hurls at you, whatever goes on in the force, I'll still be here, reminding all you poor saps what we're meant to be here for anyway – truth, justice, honour, all the stuff the TV cops had down, easy. Right now it appeared to be judging me.

Well, screw you, I thought. If it meant saving Alex's life, I'd throw it all away for a little while. It couldn't be black and white all the time.

I wandered past it, through the labyrinthine corridors, of tiles and past half-open wooden doors. Behind one an argument was in full swing, something about drugs. In another a bunch of cops were being briefed on a double homicide in the Glendale area. The police department was still moving on. Still striving to fulfil that promise they all swore on the badge.

I felt dirty, wretched. This wasn't right, none of it. People's lives hung in the balance. People I cared about. I kept getting images of Lady Liberty, telling me she'd show me the real world, the grey. Maybe this all was grey. But I'd be damned if I'd walk over to the black side. There's always white, even in the grey.

When I got to the records room, Tierney was waiting outside, nursing a cup of coffee.

"You were quick…" she began, before I grabbed her by the wrist, yanked her into the room and slammed the door. It bolted shut.

"Jesus!" she cried.

"Listen," I whispered. "I don't have much time to explain. But as far as I know you're my only hope at the moment. Balder's in serious danger. These killings.. it's The Hood."

"The Hood?"

"Working with some new player in the Russians, all I got was a pseudonym. 'The Man In White' or something. Either way, all the recent hits have been his doing. I think he's setting up all the pieces for a major gang war. I know the Russians are going to be on one side, but if we don't act fast they could hit anyone. God, if it's one of the big established families – the Yakuza, or the Punchinello's – imagine!"

"Calm down," Tierney said, lowering my arms. Her touch was soft, cool. "Now," she said. "What do you want me to do? How is Alex in danger?"

I sighed, rested against a row of boxes. Every one had someone's life in it, something that had meant something important to them. Engagement rings. Divorce papers. Children's toys, teddy bears. All bit players in the countless horror stories, unfolding every night in our city. What was black and white about splitting up a family to stop an abusive husband, or arresting a backstreet abortionist saving some girl from a lifetime of misery with a rape child?

Maybe there were no black and whites in the real world, but all we can do is stick to the right side, and hope. Without the good we're nothing.

"I'll explain later," I sighed. "Right now we need to find a box. The deposition the journalist left when he died. It should be under his name here. Please, Tierney... you have to trust me on this."

"Okay," Tierney said. "Okay, Max."

She hesitated for a moment, then began sifting through boxes and files. I did the same, scouring through all those moments, memories, fleeting glimpses. Names flew past me. None made an impact.

I glanced at my watch. Thirty-two minutes remaining. My breath froze in my throat. I started to sift through the folders faster.

After three more minutes, sweat had broken on my forehead. I felt ill. Things were sliding out of control, getting dangerous. I cursed The Hood, I cursed New York, but most of all I cursed my own damn stupidity for getting stuck into this mess in this first place. I'd just blundered off like a fool, not giving a damn, wanting nothing but cheap revenge. Thought everything would play out straight, I'd get the bad guy and that would be that. I was a fool.

And then a brilliant idea hit me.

Suddenly Tierney cried, "Here!"

I turned and walked towards her. She was clutching a small box, a bland little thing that could have held anything. I ran across the room, almost snatching it out of her hands. "Is this the one?"

"It's in his name, sure," Tierney said, hesitantly. "Look, Max, I'd like to be in the loop here…"

"No time," I replied. "You'll get it all in my report. Just promise me you'll be on call for when I need you. And you never saw me."

Tierney shrugged as I darted through the door. I was acting like a jerk, I knew, but right then it didn't matter a damn. All that mattered was saving Alex's life, and right now I was willing to do anything. With the box slid under my arm, I half-ran back out through the station, past the watchful eyes of the other cops. I was really starting to shake now.

I was about to set out on a serious gamble. A real no-chancer. But if I pulled it off I'd win it all, the full house. Alex, and The Hood. I thought back to something Alex had told me once, on a stakeout a few months back.

"Your average cop gets thrown a whole bunch of curve-balls in his career," he'd said, smoking one of those roll-ups he liked so much. Seemed like a totally different man to the sorry child slumped up in the hospital. "He learns to take advantage of every one that comes his way. The best cops take the chances, play the gambles. The trick is never to play them too hard, because that's when people die."

I ducked out of the station, into the still night sky. The Pontiac was still there, sat looking like a kicked dog on the other side of the road. There was something hanging from the windshield. Any thing white and shiny would have stuck out on that heap.

Thinking on Alex's words, I crossed to the car. A piece of paper, slipped under a windscreen wiper. I yanked it out.

Seven words: 'WEST 14TH AVENUE, BENSONHURST. FOLLOW THE SIGN.'

I'd be damned if she left a single trace.

I knew the address. With a little under half an hour remaining, I set out to take my gamble.

_To be continued…_


	7. 6: A Real NoChancer

**BLACK AND WHITE**

**_C__hapter Six: A Real No-Chancer_**

West 14th apparently lead dead into a nice, quiet basketball court that hadn't seen a game since the seventies. By the looks of things the local kids had found new hobbies to occupy them, like graffiti, vandalism and, judging by the empty bottles and reefer butts, every other vice in the book. Whilst the kids were raising themselves in the time-honoured New York fashion, the city planning authorities had seen fit to bury the place in crummy red-brick apartments and Italian laundromats. Lots of high walls, lots of narrow lanes, and no shortage of shadows. Perfect.

With a sigh I parked what was left of the Pontiac up on the court itself. I figured no-one would be too offended bar a couple of potheads, and they'd be in no position to complain anyhow. She died with a sound like a liner sinking, leaving the basketball court buried in shadow. High above, perched between two boarded-up windows, a single bleary orange light gave me just enough vision to let my imagination fill in the gaps.

I shuddered and left the car, wedging a Lucky in the corner of my mouth. By my watch I had a good ten, fifteen minutes left. I lit the cigarette, watched the court and waited.

Time passed, but only by the second hand on my watch. The air was so heavy I could almost feel it sever its way through history, gradually notching up another mark on the timeline. A TV flickered into fuzzy blue life in a third-storey window. Someone cried out through an open window across the courtyard as some guy with a foreign accent shouted something, followed by the clattering of kitchen pots. A cat leaping through a bin made me jump.

I chuckled a little as the mangy thing staggered out on to the court. "Fancy a game, puss?" I asked, chewing the cigarette. "No? Hell, you and me both, pal. You and me both. I haven't played since high school and now's a pretty rotten time to start again."

My voice echoed back to me. The cat stared at me like it was weighing up the possibility of a meal. I suddenly didn't want to be there any more. I flicked the cigarette butt to the floor.

"Do you often talk to cats, Mr Payne?"

A female voice. Jezney. Cold steel tickled the hairs on the back of my neck. I hadn't heard a sound.

"Sometimes I feel a polite obligation," I tried to choke out, but my voice was shot. I'd maybe have felt embarrassed if I hadn't felt so utterly terrified.

"The cats can look after themselves," she said calmly. "Right now you have other priorities. Where is the box?"

"Balder first. Then box."

I heard The Hood's daughter sigh a little. "Are you forgetting who has the upper hand here, Mr Payne? Are you forgetting who's pulling the strings here?"

"Maybe you're forgetting a few things," I snarled. "Like the fact that I'm a cop, and as a cop, I tend to know a few other cops. All you've got is my word that the box in there contains the deposition. For all you know I could have made a copy and have handed it to a certain other cop, on the off-chance I happen to disappear or Alex Balder happens to be terminated. If that happens the game's up for you, your father and this Man In White, whoever the hell he is. Play fair, let Balder go, and the deposition is yours. You have my word on it."

Behind me Jezney let out a little ladylike sigh and reached for a walkie-talkie. It crackled loudly into life. "Dad," she said. "Payne wants us to release the cop before he hands over the box."

The response was another crackle, but I could have sworn I heard the words, "… just kill him, then."

I thought back to what The Hood had said about being an honourable gentleman, and actually laughed out loud.

"Something funny?" Jezney snapped.

"Your father ever considered getting on the comedy circuit?" I replied. It earned me a very hard thump to the head, from what I came to realise was the butt of a gun. Pain exploded in my skull and I fell to the ground. From behind me I heard a safety catch unclick.

"The box," she snapped. "Where is it?"

I choked. My head suddenly felt like a pressure chamber. I could almost feel the steam hiss out of my ears.

"Car," I spluttered. "Front seat. Door should be open."

Jezney grunted, turned and walked over to the Pontiac. She was clad in black, nearly invisible as she slipped between shadows. All apart from the hefty pistol she held by her side, which flashed silver.

The car door swung open. Jezney reached for the box on the seat. She shook it a little. Then she opened it.

There was a single loud blast, about as loud as a firecracker. Jezney screamed as the box blew to shards in her hands, scalding her, and stumbled backwards. She fell straight into my arms, where I had a gun of my own held against her head.

She was swift. Just as I'd expected. She spun round instantly, elbow slamming hard in my gut, leg whacking hard between my legs. Cold white pain exploded in my groin and chest. My hands reached out for her wrists but it was like reaching for an eel. She slipped straight through and swung another kick up, socking home on my jaw and dislodging a couple of teeth.

As she spun round once more, arm retracting with lightning speed to go in for a brutal punch, I caught her wrist with one hand and finally reached for my gun. Without wasting a second I shoved it under her chin.

"A single Magnum bullet," I whispered, "balanced between the lid and the box. You open the box with enough force, the bullet splits, the gunpowder blows. Now… call Daddy and tell him everything's ok. Or I might forget I'm a gentleman."

Shaking, Jezney reached for her walkie-talkie. One juddering hand brought it up to her mouth.

"D-Dad?" she stuttered. "I… I've got the box."

"Payne's dead," I whispered.

"Payne's dead," she said. "He… tried to run. I… um…"

"Shot him," I suggested. "In the back. Just like how you taught me."

I caught Jezney flash me the evil eye, even in her current state. "I… shot him," she said. "In the back."

As she released the button, her father's cool voice responded almost instantly: "Good. Bring the box to me at once. As soon as you arrive I'll take care of the hit and then we can leave this town."

"Right," Jezney responded. "Yes." Then she hung up.

She'd barely slipped the walkie-talkie away when I balked, "To your car. Now."

"Where are we going?"

"Where do you think?" I smiled. "We're delivering the deposition to your father. Or what's left of it."

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Jezney's car was a fair step up from the wreck I'd been driving around the Bronx. A neat new Chrysler, all the trimmings, jet-black and modified to be as quiet as herself. Its engine whispered along the highway like an air hockey puck. I lit two cigarettes and passed one to Jezney with my free hand.

The other kept a gun pointed directly at her.

"Come on," I said. "Cheer up, will you? It's a beautiful night, in a beautiful city. Why not make the most of this little trip?"

Jezney sighed.

I frowned and stretched. She didn't have the power to override her father's orders, she'd said. To get Alex free I'd have to deal with the man himself.

"Where are we headed?" I asked calmly.

Jezney was silent.

"I said…"

"I know!" she snapped. Then, in a whisper, "The Lower East Side. Gambino's."

My hand almost dropped the gun. It was shuddering violently. The sheer weight of the situation suddenly socked home with all the force of a bullet. "Gambino's? Tell me you're kidding…"

Jezney was silent.

"Oh, jeez," I muttered. "This is bad. This is real bad."

Gambino's was a major mob hang-out, the jewel in the crown of the Demeo Family – a huge glossy uptown nightclub that attracted all the major names in the city. Our precinct had been alerted to the club that night because Don Salvatore Demeo was, in a gesture of goodwill, hosting a birthday celebration for the daughter of Don Angelo Punchinello, head of the Punchinello's – New York's current league-toppers out of the Five Families. Word was that Demeo, who had never been on great terms with the Punchinellos, was getting scared of Angelo's every-increasing grip on Midtown and was hoping that this little act of appeasement might buy him off Demeo territory for a while – at least long enough to hold off a crippling gang war. Word was also that Angie was a little too greedy for his own good and tonight was the first sign that his long-time rival was relinquishing a little of his hard-earned power. Which, to a hard-bitten warlord like the Punchinello don, was a great big invite to wipe his nemesis off the slate and claim a nice chunk of the Manhattan operations.

Which meant, in police terms, constant patrols, helicopters and most of our precinct on babysitting duties outside Gambino's.

Which meant, in friction terms, a whole bunch of angry, heavily-armed mobsters standing face to face with a whole bunch of equally angry, equally heavily-armed cops.

The whole situation was a tinderbox, a tinderbox of angst and long-held grudges and lots of guns.

Which was why the addition of a Russian-hired assassin was the perfect spark.

This was the result I'd dreaded. The masterstroke I'd feared but expected every step of the way. The Man In White, whoever he was, had hired the Hood to take out the major Russian players and to throw the Russian families into disarray. Now, with the families at odds with each other and at their weakest, he was about to start a major gang war with the Mafia. Which would mean the Russians having to fall behind their last remaining leader with the balls to drag them out of the mess and fight back. I could have guessed who that might have been.

Either side behind the Man In White, or die. It was, in its own way, brilliant. It would also be the start of the bloodiest gang war since the twenties.

"How long?" I asked through gritted teeth. "How long has he been there?"

Jezney shrugged. "He hasn't pulled off the hit yet. I know that much."

"Then we still have time," I said, practically to myself.

As if. Time was the last thing I had.

I stared out the window and watched the street-lights flicker past and took a long hard drag on my cigarette. Everything hanging in the balance, then, everything on tenterhooks. The upside-down house of cards, all balanced on one tiny point that was about to be blown over.

We drove onwards, into the night.

_To be continued..._


	8. 7: Fatal Opposition

**BLACK AND WHITE**

_**Chapter Seven: Fatal Opposition**_

Gambino's.

Late night.

Beneath the glass roof a formal party is winding down, with all present agreed that the night's festivities had been a success. The jazz band are just heading into the smoother regions of their repertoire. The dance-floor is beginning to clear of men in suits, matriarchal women in ornate dresses, laughing children. Even the massed army of bodyguards, resting against pillars or sitting on and around the roof, are starting to relax a little.

Some are even suggesting this could well be the start of a new era in the Manhattan mafia. That this gathering may be such a success that Demeo's plan of holding off the Punchinello's might actually come to fruition. Punchinello certainly looks delighted, his daughter close to his side, other members of his family engaging in friendly anecdotes with the Don.

Somewhere on the nearby rooftops a dark figure is crouched like a gargoyle.

As the Don relaxes in his chair, the dark figure takes aim.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

I pulled up about a block away from Gambino's. No chance of getting any further. All the main roads were packed full of cops, milling around in cars or rented rooms around the club.

I left Jezney's car in an alleyway and escorted her out, gun still held against her head.

"You're going to come with me quietly," I explained, "and soon this will all be over."

She scowled. Somehow I wasn't convinced.

And then I followed her gaze upwards.

…………………………………………………………………………………………...

The dark figure cocks back the hefty sniper rifle that it cradles in its arms. The sound rings out like a death bell in the still night air.

Gently it curls one gloved finger round the trigger and takes a deep breath.

…………………………………………………………………………………………...

A single shot rang out in the night. I glanced around everywhere.

Please be a misfire, please be some dumb goon with an itchy trigger-finger, letting loose on a cat or something, oh, sweet mother of God…

Then, for the second time that night I heard cries of anguish and dismay and I realised that I'd failed.

I held Jezney back against the brick wall, close to me, and leaned round the edge. Cops were leaving cars and running towards the club. Someone, a Sicilian, shouted "Cops!"

Then another shot. And another. And another.

Three punctured blasts on the still night air. My heart plummeted.

Bullets suddenly hit the pavement near our feet as the mob bodyguards started firing back – at the police. Great, I thought, a misunderstanding. As if things couldn't get any bloodier.

"Come on," I balked. "We're getting through this and we're finding your father."

I grabbed Jezney's wrist and yanked her out into the street. Around us guns were flashing, fire bouncing off windows and bullets ricocheting off the floor beneath us, leaving chips in the paving stones. We ran for the safety of a nearby car as behind me a cop took a bullet to the throat. He spun around, choking, an arterial jet of blood shooting up into the night sky, before collapsing dead.

As we dived behind the car the cops had started returning fire. Somewhere near the nightclub entrance one of the Sicilians screamed. Death scream, I figured. Bullets whacked into the steel car frame. Glass shattered.

"Stay down!" I cried. My gun was no longer on Jezney. She was near tears.

"Oh god," she whispered. "Oh god…"

Poor girl, I thought. She was no killer material, this one. I guess she'd never had much choice in the matter. The more I heard her whimpering from the gunfire, the more eager I was to have very serious words with her father.

"Listen, Jezney," I said calmly, as calmly as I could manage. As I ducked aside a wing mirror came loose and skittered along the road, trailing broken glass. Someone else screamed. "You need to call your father. Agree a meeting point. Do it now."

She nodded through a thin film of tears, tears she was struggling to hold back.

One hand reached for the walkie-talkie in her pocket. Choked up, she muttered, "Dad?" into it.

After a moment's hesitation The Hood responded. "Jezney? Is that you?"

"It… it's me," she sobbed. "We… we need to meet up. Now."

The Hood responded with something, couldn't quite make it out. Jezney nodded, though what good that would have done I didn't know.

"Ok," she said. Whispered, "See you soon." Hung up.

As she did so, she looked up at me with tears unashamedly running down her cheeks. For the first time I could see the little girl behind the mask, the scared little girl eager to impress her father in any way possible. Even killing. "He's on top of the tenement block at the corner of third. It's about half a block away. But please…" she pleaded. "Don't kill my father. Please."

Made me think of my own child. Made me think I was mad to raise it in a city like New York. In a city where a father sees fit to turn his own daughter into a killer like him. The life she never had…

"I'll do my best," I lied. "I promise. But I'm going to have to take him in. You do know that, don't you?"

"I know," she nodded. A tyre exploded, making her jump. "Maybe… maybe it's for the best."

"Are you ready to move?"

She nodded again. I reached for her hand.

We leapt out of the cover of the car. I got a glimpse of gunfire in all directions, bullets raining down on the nightclub. As I watched a man fell back against the club door, blood spraying up the wall behind him. Somewhere out in the distance a siren was sounding.

"There!" a voice called from behind. "There, one of the bastard cops…"

Footsteps, coming down the alley behind us. Two gunshots sounded, whacking home in the brick wall and spraying us with ancient chips. I pushed Jezney down and spun round, gun raised.

I fired three shots, the first Mafia goon falling backwards with a cry. His colleague was reloading. I fired once. It was a good one. His head was thrown backwards with a splatter of blood and he collapsed on to the alley floor.

"Come on," I said, helping Jezney up. The gunfire was even louder now. More cries on the night air. One of the mobsters mentioned something about 'back-up.' The situation continued to get worse.

We ducked out of the lane on to a quiet street. A few local kids were fleeing, away from the gunfight. They barely paid us a glance. A couple of cops were ducked behind a squad car, waiting to make their move.

"When's back-up getting here?" one said. "We need to get this whole thing under control _now._"

"I don't know," the other responded. "Just got word that O'Brien's down. That makes three of us. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to go in!"

I let them go. I didn't have the time.

Instead I lead Jezney across the road and we slipped through the peeled double-doors into the old Victorian tenement her father had mentioned. We both took a breather in the foyer. We were alone.

"Come on," I said after a minute or so. "Let's move. Before more people die."

I started to scale the stairs.

And then a shot rang out. One more loud shot, closer than ever.

Jezney screamed.

I spun round just in time to watch her collapse face-first to the black-and-white tiled floor, now splattered a dark red with her blood. There were no last Hollywood words, no regretful sobs. Jezney's sad, scared existence came to an end with a final spasm and a little sob on the dirty tiles. Then there was a single whisp of smoke, rising off her corpse and soon even that was whipped away in the wind.

I stumbled back down the stairs, in a daze.

"Give it up, Payne," a familiar voice said. "It's over. This whole mess."

Officer Tierney stepped in, smoking gun raised.

"Put your gun down," she frowned. "And come with me."

_To be continued…_


	9. 8: The House of Cards

**BLACK AND WHITE**

_**Chapter Eight: The House Of Cards**_

I stared blankly. For a moment everything clattered together, trying to make some sense of it all. Then it gave up and went home.

"I'm sorry to break it to you like this," Tierney sighed, still holding the gun on me. "But this has all gone on for too long. You and the Hood's little trick came pretty close to screwing everything up. I'm here to clean up the mess."

"So you're a turncoat," I snarled. "Who you working for? The Russian?"

"Who else?" she shrugged. "The Man In White's the future in this town."

"Sure," I sighed. "What's going on out there – that's the future. Do you realise what this wonderful Man In White's done? Do you realise how many people are going to die as a result of this stunt?"

"Maybe." Tierney seemed remarkably nonchalant. At our feet Jezney's corpse was still and pale, like an angel of damnation. "I don't feel great about what's going to happen either. But I'm sick of the way the Mafia in this town think they own everything. I'm sick of people not having the balls to stand up to them. As far as I'm concerned it's better to have the gangsters wipe each other out than for them to carry on picking off innocent civilians and for our hands to be tied the whole time." She took a step towards me, not noticing the still-warm body on the floor. "Come on, Max," she said. "You're always complaining about this. Now's your chance…"

"Not like this," I replied. "This is just wrong. Don't you realise nothing's that easy in life? There won't be some neat end-all solution where all the bad guys kill each other and the good guys live happily ever after. There'll be violence. Horrible violence. Innocent people will get caught in the crossfire, many innocent people… Jesus! You saw what was going on out there!"

Tierney kept the gun on me. "Do what you want," she said. "It won't make a difference. Turn around and head up. And keep those hands high."

I did as she asked. I didn't have much choice. My gun was tossed to the floor, just a few feet away from the Hood's late daughter. I'm sorry, Jezney, I thought. Whole lot of good that is for you now, but I'm sorry anyway.

Hell – I was sorry for all of us. Jezney, Alex, Tierney, even The Hood – we were all pawns on a great big black-and-white chessboard, disposable nothing characters in the Man In White's vast intricate game. Seemed to me the only clean-cut black-and-white left.

Well, that and the other fatal opposition.

Me, the black. And somewhere, out there, him. The White.

We scaled three sets of stairs in silence, listening to the gunshots outside, the cries and screams of pain. Occasionally they'd be drowned out under a television set behind an apartment door where a resident was totally oblivious to the war-zone outside. Just that and the creak of our footsteps. Tierney kept her gun close and didn't budge an inch.

Finally we stumbled up onto the roof.

"Payne?" The Hood said. He looked curious. All clad in the black gear I saw him put on earlier, the sniper rifle next to him was still smoking. Down beneath us sirens were still wailing. He didn't seem to care. As he watched, Tierney stepped up behind me, gun raised.

"Don't even consider it, Hood," she said. "Both of you. Down. We're going to finish this quietly."

The Hood didn't appear to have noticed. "Where's Jezney?" he snarled. "Where is my daughter?"

"The girl downstairs?" Tierney remained nonchalant. "Dead. She got in the way. Now both of you, get down…"

"Dead?" The Hood snapped. "DEAD?" He was walking forward without a care in the world.

"Stay back!" Tierney cried. "That's an order!"

She fired, twice. The Hood took both bullets in the gut. He stumbled backwards, wincing. Kevlar, I noticed. He stopped for a moment, sucked in air and then carried on, staggering a little.

For the first time Tierney looked afraid.

"S – Stay back!" she cried hopelessly. "Get away…"

The Hood threw her aside like an empty bag of potato chips. She slumped straight to the floor, out cold. Something had snapped in his mind. Something big.

My legs finally capable of moving, I crept over to Tierney's unconscious body and reached for her gun. "And I'll see you later…" I whispered, slipping it out of her tight grip.

I was about two storeys down when I first heard the Hood's cries. They were loud, animal bellows of utter hopelessness. I would never forget them. They rang out in the run-down tenement corridors like a foghorn.

I was mad to think of raising a child here. Totally mad.

I stepped down, to where he sat on the floor, clutching his daughter in his arms. His headgear had been removed, his hood thrown back. Jezney's blood had stained his chest, streaked up his face. Tears and snot ran merrily down his cheeks.

"Come on," I said, holding the gun on him. "Let's go, Hood. It's over."

He barely noticed I was there. Instead, like a wolf catching a scent, he turned to me, aware of some sort of presence.

Then, seeming to decide that this presence was solely responsible for all of the misery in his life, he got up and ran at me, screaming at the top of his lungs.

"BASTARD!" he cried, falling full-force into me, hurtling both of our bodies against the staircase. I felt an explosion of pain in my back and chest, a whole new rack of throbbing bruises. The Hood had his fingers round my throat with a grip like a car-crusher.

As my head fell back, red and black blotches flashed in front of my vision, everything rimmed with red.

Got to fight out of this, I thought. Got no choice. That or die. Come on, Max.

I forced a swift knee upwards, once, twice, three times, driving him back. Tried to force the gun between us. I was growing light-headed. The Hood was sobbing and crying. Right now his mentality was at about the animal level. His grip didn't relent.

I finally manoeuvred the gun up, pointed it directly against the Hood's chest. He didn't notice. I fired a single shot. He noticed that.

The Hood cried and fell backwards, the hole in his Kevlar smoking. As I watched blood seeped through and started to trickle round his legs. Without thinking I slumped to the floor and started to crawl up the staircase. Hot vomit and something else – blood? – sizzled at the back of my throat. I started coughing violently.

Come on Max, I thought as I pushed myself up on shaky legs. Move it. Think of Michelle.

The Hood was staggering towards me again, up the staircase. Almost without thinking he kicked me hard in the chest, causing me to curl into a foetal position and take a tumble down the rest of the stairs. As I lay there he thudded upwards, driven by some animal instinct to kill something important.

It all made sense to me. Another of those basic psychology quirks. He'd spent his whole life as a death junkie. Killing was all he knew. Now, as he staggered reluctantly on to Death's own threshold, he was getting as many kill kicks as he could.

The sniper rifle. Tierney.

I pushed up and followed him. For the first time I noticed the blood trickling out of my nose.

Ignore it. Keep going.

I followed The Hood up on to the roof. He stood beneath the hazy city lights, the night a symphony of gunfire and screams and screeching tyres flowing all around him. Then, smeared in his daughter's blood, he let out a hopeless scream and walked with utter determination towards the sniper rifle.

I fired two more shots. Through blurry vision they didn't achieve much. One blew off part of his shoulder, but for all he reacted he might as well have been hit by a clumsy butterfly. The other vanished, out with all the other bullets vanishing into the night.

By the sounds of it the mobsters were retreating. By the looks of it, somehow Tierney had joined them, leaving not a trace to show she'd been here. In my foggy state I was starting to wonder if she ever had.

One thing for it.

I ran across the roof and collapsed on the Hood, as he held the sniper rifle under his arm. One arm wrapped tight round his neck and we struggled together like that, locked in a death-tango, tumbling against the concrete parapet like frisky lovers. Out the corner of my eye I caught glimpses of Gambino's and the war-zone around it – shattered glass, weeping women, the roof-windows all blown in. Footsteps, escaping off into the night. Guns clattering loudly, back and forth. A couple of bodies strewn on the entrance steps.

All his fault. All of it.

I kicked him twice in the kidneys and slammed his head on the parapet. He winced and elbowed me. Pain exploded in my chest. Maybe a broken rib. Head grew fuzzy. Ignore it. Ride the rage. Ride the adrenaline.

I hurled the Hood down to the floor and hit him twice, two real shiners, the kind that had the full weight of ferocious anger behind them. The Hood's nose exploded like a bottle of Tabasco, arterial blood spurting down his front. One of his teeth was flung to the back of his throat, blood slipping down his cheek.

Grunting, he hurled me up, to the edge of the parapet. Punched me straight in the gut. I tumbled off the side, hitting the tiled roof slope and tumbling down to the gutter. Somewhere a long way below me were the streets of New York, now littered with blood and bullets and broken glass. The House of Cards collapsing.

The gutter began to groan beneath my weight. I reached out for the tiles, gripping them with blood-slicked fingers.

And then he came, tumbling down, tiles shattering and crumbling away beneath him, a black bat of vengeance lunging at me with nothing but pain and blood on his mind. Pain and blood and revenge – that great driver.

The Hood kicked me, sending me hurtling over the edge.

One hand clutched on to the edge of the gutter, the street four storeys below me looking small and distant. My head started to spin. I felt so weak a tiny part of me wished it could let go and plummet. My legs kicked desperately against thin air. Somewhere near my head the Hood was breathing heavy and exhaling blood.

Well, look on the bright side. At least he's finished, too.

Nice, Max, look on the bright side.

The Hood brought the edge of his boot down on my gripping fingers, hard. Felt like he damn near severed them to the bone. I screamed out loud, resisting that desperate instant reaction to let go. The whole gutter sagged about half a foot, round my weight. Brought me a little closer to the ground.

I was damned if I wasn't about to bring The Hood down with me.

My other hand, previously flopping hopelessly in mid-air, reached up and clutched on to the Hood's trousers and yanked hard, bringing the whole weight of gravity with them. He stumbled forward, hands desperately digging into the tiles beneath him, kicking and flailing for dear life.

My gripping hand released its iron grip for a second and then clutched on to the Hood, bringing all the weight on to those struggling fingertips. They couldn't bear it. Neither could the gutter.

Everything collapsed like a house of cards – the gutter, the tiles, and we fell with it, the dark epicentre of a short-lived debris meteor.

I hit something hard, knocking all the air out of me. After a few moment's darkness I buzzed back into reality, but everything was a little too glittery. The smell told me I'd landed in, of all the dime-store miracles, a dumpster. A few feet away, lying amidst the wreckage on the alley pavement like a squashed fly, was the Hood.

"Jezney," he was saying, in a strained voice. I tried to push myself up, my hands squelching into heaps of bin bags. The sheer agony through my entire body told me not to bother.

"Jezney… oh, Jezney… god…Jezney…"

The Hood let out a little sob, a long, loud cough, and then a final loud exhale.

I managed to force myself up, on to one arm. Police headlights were flashing red in the lane. In their flickering light I could see the Hood, lying in a spreading puddle of blood and gutter and wreckage. He was dead.

It was over. For now.

Over, I thought, lying back.

"Hello?" a voice cried into the lane. "Hello? Oh, no… come take a look at this!"

Gritting my teeth, I forced myself back on to one arm. The red lights were blinding. But they were beautiful.

Made me think of Michelle. Made me think of my unborn child. The Hood's corpse started to look like a foreshadowing.

"Payne?" a shadow said, walking into the lane. "That you, Payne? Jesus…"

It was Kapowski. Hadn't seen him since Alex got shot. Alex… felt like a hundred years ago.

Alex.

"Hey!" I called, surprised at how strained my voice sounded. "Kapowski?"

"You ok?" he asked, walking towards me eating a donut. Looked like the worst of the gunfight was over too.

"Forget me," I replied, "I'll be fine. Listen, Kapowski… I need you to send a squad in to Alex Balder's ward, up at Mercy General. Tell them to bring a Bombs Disposal guy…Oh, and put out an APB for our own Annette Tierney…"

"Tierney? Looks like the only guy going to Mercy tonight is you, Payne… what have you been doing?" Kapowski said round mouthfuls of donut.

"I tell you," I said, stumbling out of the dumpster. "Right now… I would kill for a shot of good liquor."

Above our heads the first few lights of hazy dawn were starting to shine. Already it was clear enough to see Kapowski's big warm face.

I lit a cigarette and, aided by Kapowski, walked back to his car.

_To be continued…_


	10. Epilogue

**BLACK AND WHITE**

**Epilogue**

"Jeez, Max… you look worse than me."

Alex chuckled softly and rolled over in his bed. I smiled.

Through the hospital windows the city was just roaring into early morning life, beneath a milky blue sky. The first few commuter cars were rushing past, going nowhere.

"Look on the bright side," I replied. "Had I really screwed up, you'd be all over Manhattan right about now."

Alex laughed again. "The boys tell me your some sort of hero down at the precinct. I heard you nailed the Hood."

I shrugged. "It wasn't enough. It's only just beginning, Alex. For better or worse."

I tossed a newspaper on his lap. It was an early edition I'd picked up from a vendor on the way over here. The delivery van was still unloading. Seemed the local hacks had been quick off the mark.

Alex read the headline: 'SHOOT-OUT LEAVES EIGHTEEN DEAD.'

Then he saw the picture, skimmed the article and said, "Oh Jesus."

The Hood had succeeded in assassinating the worst targets he could have. Salvatore Demeo. Demeo's bodyguard. And Punchinello's daughter. As soon as word got out that the late Hood had been behind the killings, New York would explode.

"And this is the Russians, right?" Alex said, all hope dropping from his voice.

I nodded. "New player on the scene. Calls himself the Man In White. He's shaping up to unite all the Russian gangs under him. Dime's mob, the St George boys, Potemkin's crew – all on the Mafia defensive."

Alex nodded forlornly. "Any idea who this Man In White is?"

"The answer to that was apparently hidden in the reporter's deposition the Hood wanted," I said. "I checked the box on the way over here. Turned out to be a dud, after all that. I'm guessing Tierney switched the boxes."

"Tierney?"

"She's turned traitor. We don't know for how long, but the Chief's planning a major investigation. Check out just how far this Man In White's set root in the department."

"Where is Tierney?"

"No-one knows. She disappeared from the shoot-out last night and hasn't been seen since. My guess is she's gone back to the Russian."

"With all the information the department has on the case so far…" Alex sighed. "And probably that deposition, too."

"Exactly," I replied.

"Then this whole thing… oh, man…"

I started to regret breaking the news to Alex, a little. He'd barely got out of the shock-coma. But who else could I tell? I needed him back on the force, as soon as possible. Things were about to blow up in New York and we'd most probably be on clean-up duty.

"One thing, though," Alex said suddenly. "Why would the Hood hold me hostage so that you'd get that deposition if the Man In White already had Tierney on the department? Why go to all that trouble for nothing?"

"I've been thinking on this myself," I replied, "and all I've got is that perhaps the Man In White deliberately kept the Hood out of the loop. After all, loyal though he was, the Hood was disposable to the Man In White. In fact, when he realised the extent of his plan, taking the Hood out of the picture was about the only sensible approach he had. Think about it – this whole gang war would get pretty brutal. I'm guessing the Russian didn't want to keep the Hood subsidised or, worse, see him switch to the other side under a better offer. The guy was a mercenary, after all. Best to have the Hood removed from the picture entirely. It wasn't worth the risk of having someone that lethal switch to the other side. I'm assuming Hood sent me off on that little errand because the poor bastard was confused and still trying to prove his loyalty."

"Then it seems like this Man In White betrayed everyone, then."

"Yeah," I said. "Except Tierney. As far as I know, the two of them are still on close terms. He had her on clean-up duty – hired her to take out me and the Hood and all the other loose ends. Maybe he'll get rid of her now."

"Doubt it," Alex said. "She knows too much. Too valuable. If he wants rid of her she'll turn up dead."

"Then this is one rotten piece of work," I frowned, exasperated.

"You've got that right." I'd never seen Alex look so utterly despairing. "You know, this has really put a damper on my recovery. And I can't help but feel that all this is my fault, you know? If I hadn't screwed up over that reporter…"

"Don't be a fool, Alex. We underestimated the Russians, right from the start. We're all to blame, but it's no use doing it now. We've got to stay focussed on the current situation and prevent more people needlessly dying."

"Yeah," Alex sighed. "Yeah, you're right."

We didn't say anything else. Nothing else needed to be said. Outside there were voices on the street, the roar of cars was growing louder. New York was waking up to a nightmare and I'd seen it all unfold, helpless.

Someone out there, probably congratulating himself as he read the morning papers, was the Man In White. Watching over everything, cold and detached like the eye of God, as his pieces are manoeuvred ever closer across the chess-board. He'd put his enemy in check, pulling off a little number that would have made Kasparov wince. Lined the city up in his favour, through an intricate web of backstabbing and heartless murder.

Nothing was in black and white, not in human beings. Nothing was clean-cut. One minute you're drinking and laughing with friends, the next they're holding a gun to your head. I thought back to what Tierney had said. About how we were all so sick of not being able to stop the Mafia.

She just wanted to protect her loved ones. That's the only reason. The only truth.

The rest was all in greys.

Outside the hospital a little girl was kicking around a newspaper, sodden by the leaking drains. I lit a cigarette and watched the pages flutter apart. Words, lives, truths, damp and shattered, tumbled round her feet. I caught glimpses here and there – 'death,' 'Russians,' 'mob.' None of it seemed true. She glanced up at me and laughed. I flashed her a smile. Couldn't bring much more effort into it.

Her mother called her away.

I was still staring at that damp newspaper. The black ink was running. All those clean-cut words, smeared in grey.

Thinking of Michelle, I crushed out the cigarette and went home.

THE END

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_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just to point out, if there's anyone who hasn't gotten it yet, and I apologise if you haven't – blame my writing – the Man In White is the Max Payne series' very own smooth operator, Vladimir Lem! Just thought I'd clarify that, and hope it makes the ending a little more satisfying. Any loose ends here (Tierney's disappearance and so on) I've left open for when I inevitably feel the call of a new retcon, probably soon, although I've got a few other projects on the go at the moment. Leaves me only to say, thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing (any support is endlessly encouraging) and goodnight!_


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